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“Prayer is not preparation for the battle – prayer is the battle.” – Oswald Chambers

Even though many church planters pray personally and believe in the power of prayer, rarely do they invest in developing a prayer base before starting out to plant a church.

Developing a prayer base is critical!

8 Ways to Develop a Prayer Base

1. Personal prayer – You cannot ask people to pray daily if you aren’t committed to daily prayer. It starts with you. “Speed of the leader, speed of the team.” Start praying and ask God to raise up prayer warriors to pray with you.

2. Develop a prayer book – Write out prayer requests for your city and your church plant and compile them in a booklet. Consider a different prayer request for each day of the month. You can then give the prayer book to all of your prayer partners.

3. Offer a prayer workshop – Invite your prayer partners to join you for a workshop on how to pray effectively. Encourage them to bring friends along.

4. Daily prayer points – Send 3 prayer points every day by email or text to your prayer partners.

5. Virtual prayer walk online – Post pictures and prayer requests for others to pray for your city. Even if they are far away, they can see where you are planting and how to pray.

6. Tweet updates – Create a twitter account for sending out your prayer requests. (You can make it a private account if necessary.) They key is to send out daily prayer requests to your prayer base.

7. Prayer walks – Schedule regular times for praying while walking through the neighborhoods in your community. Invite your prayer partners to join you in praying “on site with insight.”

8. Churches – Pray for other churches in your city. Ask them to pray for you. Keep in touch with their prayer needs and let them know how to pray for you.

Prayer is too often overlooked as a critical component for starting new churches.

I urge you to develop your prayer base before you get started with church planting activities.

Once you get started making disciples, train those you are discipling to pray with you!

Keep in touch often with your prayer base – share requests and answers to prayer!

Today’s Missional Challenge

Develop a prayer base of 50 prayer partners who will join you in prayer for your church plant. Commit to pray for them and keep in touch with them every week.